


The Proper Mourning Ritual

by Veei



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 22:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5266613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veei/pseuds/Veei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa is an old woman, living her last moments, when she receives a visit she has been waiting for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Proper Mourning Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> I got sad working on my main fic so I saw no reason I should be the only one with feels. (forgive the conjugation, I'm struggling with English lately)
> 
> EDIT: I added a couple of things I thought would be important.

Sansa had asked her children to let her die at home. So when she had known her time drew near she had traveled back to Winterfell with great difficulty and settled in what looked best like her own old room. Having devoted her family all her life, she wanted her last days to herself. Her mind blurred often now, but this remained clear to her.

Her body ached most of her days. Every muscle, every bone tortured her. She stood arched, her knuckles swollen and stiff, her skin wrinkled all over. The long thick auburn mane that she had loved had been white as winter skies for decades. She had mourned her beauty for a time, then she had lived on. And now she could barely see herself in a mirror if she tried.

A great sadness had taken her when she had reached the age her mother had when she passed, and never grew a day older. Embarrassed, her husband had given her cold words of comfort. Or he had tried. Her children had been better at the task.

Her life had been full, to say the least. Her second husband, long dead, had been a kinder one that she thought she would have. A stern man, but a good lord. He couldn't find love for her, but he had not been a hateful man, and for this she had been grateful. He had given her black and auburn haired children, who then in turn had given her grandchildren, and so on. And she had loved all those the gods had left her and those they took. The old queen had been right about that.

Installed by her brother’s steward in a chair by the window, watching the snow top the trees and the roof of the glass gardens, she was slowly falling asleep, when a warm snarling voice erupted behind her, " _Little bird_.".

Oh she knew that voice, didn't she? It made her happy to hear it again.

She looked up with difficulty but disappointment fell on her, the man with her was young, the faithful picture of the one she remembered, from his grey eyes to his scars, devouring and formidable. His image was startlingly clear against the blur of everything else.   
However puzzled she was, it was sweet to see him again.

"What happened to you? ", she asked him.  
"I was waiting."

Sansa looked hard at his face, searching for what she couldn't see.

"Why? Did you come to apologize to me?"  
"I reckon it's a beating I deserve…"  
"What for?"

They both knew. That man had done her a lot of harm.

"I put a blade to your neck. I made you sing. I left you to him."  
"Yes you did. You left me to them. You hurt me, you kissed me, you left."

He smiled then looked ashamed.

"I took no kiss but I took too much."

She wanted to tell him her husband made her sing once but it was him she had been thinking about. Truth be told, she often did in those stiff embraces. Sandor Clegane had been in her dreams her whole life.  
When she had gotten older she had bitterly realized what had really happened in her bedroom the night the sky burned green. For a few months, she had resented him, betrayal seething her every waking thoughts.

"I know you were scared that night, I was too.", she sat up, "I always wondered what happened to you."

It had been when she had forgiven him and wondered if she would ever get to tell him in person.  
  
"Then Arya told me you died. I was so sad."  
  
He smiled and couldn't have looked more different than Joffrey’s dog. The anger was what was missing from his face.

"It took me some more years to die."  
"It did? Where did you go?"  
"Where I paid what I owed."  
"I hope you found peace.", she answered.

Kneeling at her side, he didn't quite look like the man she had known.

"Bugger that.", he erupted. She laughed, this was how she remembered him. "I found myself, that's good enough."

Sansa felt dizziness infuse her mind. He got closer, his big shape pulsating heat, it almost warmed her.

"You are dead, aren't you?", she uttered, frightened at last.  
"I’m here, little bird. I’m staying. I should have come to you when I was not dead yet. But you deserved better. When I passed, I understood."  
"I did", she smiled, "but I would have still wanted to know." Aches were fleeing her body. "I forgave you. Even if you didn't deserve it."  
"I know now. You didn't have to."

Her hand felt small and weightless in his.

"I wanted to. Nobody ever forgave you."

Maybe in this other life he would kiss her for good.

"That's no fate that they never did.", his cold tone was as close to disgust as Sansa had ever heard from him.  
"Well I did. You don't have to agree."  
"I know better than to argue with the Lady."  
"Do you recognize me? I got so old so quickly. I don't know where all this time went."  
"You still look the same to me.", he looked around, "I was on these lands once. But this castle is not the one I remember."  
"It's rebuilt. They made the changes my brother thought best. It makes for warmer winters but I still miss the old castle."  
"Where you're going, it's that old granite eyesore that's waiting for you."  
"Are you coming with me?"  
"I'm there already.", he was solemn and kept his distance, "There are folks to see you, they’ve been waiting longer than me."  
"I’ll have time for everyone, won't I?"  
"I’ll make sure you do. This time I’ll keep you safe, little bird."

In some corner of her mind, she saw herself clinging to the remains of her dress that fateful day in front of the boy king who had done her so much harm. She hated fearing that the death that had protected her from him would put her at his mercy again. But if Joffrey would be there, then Lady would be too. And father, mother, and all of the others.   
And him too it seemed.   
"Me too.", he agreed, as if she had spoken. 

  
She took Sandor's hand and squeezed it hard even when he recoiled. When she touched his scars he shivered deeply and everything blurred very suddenly.  
She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the snow, to the cold and to the quiet inside until she felt numb and heavy, aware of every inch of her body, and then she felt nothing anymore.

* * *

When they found her later that evening, she was cold. A young woman's smile on her lips, her old body leaned to the side. Under the cover, her hands clasped each other solemnly.

Word of her passing was sent to her sister, who travelled, and her brother, kept away by duty that day, then to others. Many cried for her, for she had been a good lady. There was some heated arguments about the mourning rituals to be performed, some arguing the northern ways should prevail, other favored the Riverland’s, even her husband’s traditions were evoked. But in the end, they laid her down in the crypt bellow Winterfell where her kin rested, as there had always been a place for her there. 

When the maesters wrote about her, in the many years to follow, they spoke of her torments, of her family. They knew a great deal of her childhood, of her time in King’s Landing, of the Eyrie and of what had happened in the years after the war was done and over. They knew what she had done, what had been done to her, but her many thoughts she had learned to keep silent. They knew her shell but not the woman inside.

The only mystery that remained, even after some apprentice at the Citadel took it upon himself to record her history, was why she chose such a sigil as her own. No one knew why. Her husband had not known and certainly had not cared, and neither had her children, grandchildren and remaining family.  
They only knew how she had insisted on keeping a bird perching on a broken blade as her sigil, for the world to know.

Sansa had been patroness to armorers, seamstresses and many more craftsmen and each in turn had fashioned her sigil in their best work. It was in the pattern of her skirts, in her portraits and it sat over her heart clasped in silver for over six decades. Some rumored she chose it in mourning of Lord Baelish who had another bird as his sigil himself and had been revealed to be one of her captors. Yet she never expressed anything but contempt for the man.

She always refused to be called "The bird", "Winterfell’s bird" or even "The little bird". She turned down the words each time. When asked, Sansa had only smiled and repeated, it was not for others to use such a name.


End file.
